Road-rage incident leads to rush-hour coffee throw

Searching through hundreds of pages of police reports, there are a few incident types that typically catch my attention: assaults with weapons, sexual offenses, threats to kill.

Tuesday I found an assault report with a unique weapon: A cup of coffee. It wasn’t hot, just “medium” the victim told police.

The incident started during the Thursday evening commute at Fifth Avenue and Cherry Street. The victim, in her early 30s, was in the passenger seat and a man was driving.

There were traveling eastbound on Cherry in the second lane from the outside. As they moved forward on a green light, the suspect vehicle, which was in the outside right-turn-only lane, made an unsuccessful attempt to merge in front of them, according to the report.

The woman shouted insults from her open window, gave them the finger and threw the cup of coffee in through the passenger window.

The woman in the passenger seat reported calling 911 because she was frightened.

The suspect allegedly taunted her as she put the phone to her face.

Police tracked the suspect vehicle to a Georgetown company, which was closed when police first tried to contact it. It was not clear if officers followed up.